It seems like most of the attention paid to up-and-coming American riders these days goes to the all-rounders and guys who can win stage races—the Taylor Phinneys and Tejay van Garderens. And for good reason. For years, only one U.S. sprinter—Tyler Farrar—has challenged the likes of Mark Cavendish. So it should come as good news to fans of sprinting that Jake Keough of Massachusetts looks ready to compete, and win, at pro cycling’s highest level.

The 25-year-old fastman has won just about every important criterium on the domestic circuit, and at the Tour of Utah in August he took his first UCI victory by winning Stage 4, beating an international field that included Farrar.

Bicycling caught up with Keough to talk about his diet of criterium racing, the state of field sprinting, and what it will take for him to compete against the world’s fastest bike racers.

Bicycling: This year you again won a number of U.S. criteriums but also had a breakout victory at the UCI-rated Tour of Utah. And you raced a lot in South America, Asia, and Europe, where you had some mixed luck. Are you satisfied with how things have gone?

Jake Keough:I’ve raced something like 85 days this year, and it all started in Argentina with the Tour de San Luis in January. I was able to get on the podium with Tom Boonen and [Francesco] Chicchi on one of the sprint stages. Then I did the Tour de Langkawi, which was a little frustrating—I think had three second-places there to [Andrea] Guardini. But that fueled the fire going into the spring races and semi-Classics—we did the Three Days of De Panne, Scheldeprijs, among other races—and got loads of experience. I had quite a few bad crashes in Europe, but my form was good.

Then going into summer the form was good but I had more crashes. I crashed on the last lap of Philly [TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championship] and was knocking on the door in China at the Tour of Qinghai Lake but crashed bad there as well. Then I brought the form up once again in Utah and was good in Colorado.

Bicycling: Your team, UnitedHealthcare, has transitioned over the past two seasons from a North American powerhouse to up-and-coming contender in Europe. How has it been going?

Keough: Last year was our first foray into the European races, setting up the service course and the infrastructure to make the transition from the U.S. This year, the team was able to build on that experience and be more comfortable in the European setting, which maybe didn’t show in quantifiable results but did show with a lot more consistency.

We came back to the U.S. with higher-caliber results [two stage wins at the Tour of Utah and a stage win at the USA Pro Challenge], and we’ve also had good results over at the Tour of Portugal [three stage wins] with the other half of the team. And the Tour of Britain has gone really well for us. We’re showing we’re more comfortable in those races, and hopefully next year we’ll make that next step of consistently winning.

Bicycling: As the team looks to make an impression abroad, has it demanded results from you?

Keough: Well, I’m the sprinter for the team, so my mindset is to always try to win. But you need the necessary experience and have to be realistic in your goals. Still, I expect myself to perform. The team’s still growing, and it’s a good atmosphere to learn from more experienced riders and build without pressure. As I develop, I’ll put more pressure on myself, but for the moment I get to learn from experienced riders—Robert Förster, Jason McCartney, and the other guys who’ve done the big races.

Keough: Förster. He’s been my mentor, and he’s won stages of the Vuelta and the Giro and he’s done the Tour de France a number of times. He has all the experience and knowledge, and he also has the ability. He’s a great teacher, passing down a lot of his information to me. That’s a good asset to have, and hopefully moving forward we can take that to the top level.

Robert taught me that you can have a bad day one day and the next day you can win. It was in the Giro one year, I think, where he said he was dropped nearly every day of the race, always in the grupetto, barely making the time cut, for three weeks of a hard Giro. Come the last day, he won the stage into Milano.

Keough: It was really good. It was a culmination of a year of bad crashes and learning. In a road race, a UCI sprint is a lot different than a criterium sprint. So to put the puzzle together and figure out what it takes to win at that level, it’s really important to carry forward and be confident that I can win those kinds of sprints.
Bicycling: In winning the stage at Utah you beat Tyler Farrar, one of the world’s best sprinters and one of only a handful of riders who’ve ever beaten current world champion Mark Cavendish. After beating Farrar, did you ever think, “I’ve risen to a new level”?

Keough: Yes and no. Tyler’s one of the great champions of sprinting in the world, and as an American he’s someone I’ve looked up to. He raced for HealthNet years ago, too, which is now UnitedHealthcare. So it’s a good gauge of where I’m at, but at the same time racing’s racing and sprinting’s sprinting, and every day is different. For me, it was another day trying to make a step forward, and I was able to do that on that day. It was a great win, but winning is hard, no matter what level or who’s there.

A younger Jake Keough at Speed Week. (Matt Koschara)

Bicycling: After Utah you rode the USA Pro Challenge where you and the team targeted Stage 5 into Colorado Springs, a sprinters’ stage. But you failed to crack the top 10 and Farrar won. What happened?

Keough: That race was extremely hard, and for me as a sprinter it was as much about building more base, foundation, and depth for next year as it was just about struggling through it. The first four stages had massive climbs and I had no chance of winning, so it was about trying to conserve energy. The team rode awesome on Stage 5, chasing the break all day, and we had control with about a kilometer and a half to go.

Unfortunately, it was sort of a normal sprinting circumstance that I got swarmed, and went from about sixth wheel to 20th, and I just couldn’t pick my way back through to the front. It was frustrating, because even after struggling my way through that much hard altitude climbing, I had good legs. I wasn’t able to pay my teammates back for working so hard that day, but the positive side is that my legs were good.

Bicycling: What did you learn about yourself that day?

Keough: No matter how hard the racing is, at that stage the whole bunch is hurting, so you’ve got to take some responsibility and say, “Even if I’m suffering, it’s better to push forward to try to ride in an even better position than you think you have to.” And that’s a good confidence booster. You’ve got to back yourself before you can win a race.

Bicycling: So are you and Farrar big rivals now?

Keough: [Laughs] Everyone you sprint against is your enemy on race day. For me, it’s an honor to be put in the same sentence as Tyler, and hopefully next year I can give him more of a run for his money in the other races. Hopefully we’ll have more of an American sprint rivalry going on.

Bicycling: What role does motivation play in winning for you?

Keough: It’s the drive to be successful in whatever you’re doing, and the drive to live up to your own expectations. For me, that’s living up to my dream of becoming a top professional bike racer. I know some riders are driven by money, some are driven by other outside sources, but for me it’s about achieving my own goals and dreams.

Bicycling: American racing tends to emphasize short, fast, criterium-style events. But in Europe, long, hard 200-plus-kilometer races are the norm. Given your criterium background, are you prepared to win sprint stages in Grand Tours?

Keough: It’s definitely different racing, and there are different paths riders can take. Some guys race for the U.S. national team and gain experience in the longer races, and then others like myself race for domestic teams, race the NRC [National Racing Calendar] and come up that way. I come from a BMX background, which is where my sprinting comes from and my riding style, which suits U.S. criterium racing well. I learned to be a winner on the domestic scene, and each year I have made a linear step as far as my level of racing and results go. For me that’s worked perfectly, because I’ve been able to use my resources every step of the way, and never made a step that’s too big.

U.S. racing is in a really good place. There’s a deep field, and we have U.S.-only nationals now. The criterium scene is awesome with great competition, and U.S. crit riders are definitely some of the fastest in the world. But, yeah, the capacity to do the big, long days—to do the climbs in the middle of the day—that only comes from doing hard races. Having the speed and background of crit racing is a huge benefit, but you have to race in the really hard races to gain the capacity, and crit racing doesn’t fit into that objective of winning road sprints in Europe. It’s got to be 200k days, recover, 200k, recover, repeat.

Racing in Europe, specifically at the WorldTour level, is much higher than anything else. The most important thing is to consistently be in those races. Even races like the Tour of California, Tour of Utah, and Tour of Colorado [USA Pro Challenge]—those races elevate your level. But for the spring and most of the summer you need to race in Europe. Next year, the plan is to do only the harder, bigger races, and trying to get results, moving forward to be able to do a three-week race and get results there.

Bicycling: So you’re patiently building strength and experience so that you can one day win in Europe?

Keough: I’m not a patient person. [Laughs] It’s frustrating when you’re in a race and you’re in it to win and you’re knocking on the door and you’re not quite there yet. But my philosophy has been to make consistent steps, like, if this year I’ve gone from winning U.S. criteriums to podiums in Asia and finishing a European race—as opposed to winning one—that’s a victory in itself. Next year, if I can win an Asian race and podium in a European race, that’s also a victory. So it’s being patient on the winning side, but also knowing there are goals I can achieve on the racing side.

Bicycling: Some have criticized you for being a dangerous sprinter. Do you agree?

Keough: Anyone who knows me knows I hate losing. That’s probably my biggest character trait—I’m pretty competitive. I’ve always been that way. I have four younger brothers, and we try to race and beat each other at anything we do. That fiery determination that I’ve carried—and most of the time it’s from anger when I don’t win—pushes me to excel even more. I definitely have pushed the envelope in everything that I do in life, so it’s not a surprise that some people can think I’ve taken it too far in a race. It’s not ballet; it’s bike racing.

Bicycling: Some talk about “the temperament of the sprinter.” What does that mean?

Keough: I can only talk about myself, but for sure I have a short temper. I think “the temperament of the sprinter” resonates with most sprinters, because you need such a desire to win, such a drive to win, that you have to block every other emotion, everything else out to find the finish line first. You can’t be distracted; you have to take big, big risks. Crashing is part of the game; getting hurt is part of the game. That all plays into that drive, and for me that drive comes out when I win. You can see the release.

Bicycling: You’ve also been described as a super-serious bike racer.

Keough: I’d say I’m very focused. From the time I was six years old racing BMX, my whole bike-riding career, this is what I wanted to do as a job. I had absolutely no ambitions of going to college. School happened only because I had to be there. So far it’s paid off, though it does get frustrating at times because you put that much into it and you always want to see the results and they’re not always there. Being focused is what’s pushed me through and hasn’t let anything get in my way.

Bicycling: It seems there’s increased emphasis on the sprint leadouts these days. What effect has that had on racing?

Keough: Pro teams are putting more emphasis on sprint trains. Where you used to have, say, five sprinters going for the win, you now have five sprinters’ teams, with maybe five riders per team, at any given race. So you’ve gone from five riders to 25 riders who are trying to take up the same amount of road. That in itself is going to be more dangerous and make for faster racing. And it’s going to make it harder for a rider who doesn’t have a leadout to push into that area of the sprint.

That said, I’m a bit more of a scrappy rider, and I think I can win without a leadout. The key is to have a plan going into the race. If the plan is to have a leadout, you need to be a uniform, tight-knit train at the end. If the plan is to freelance, the plan’s much more open to the sprinter himself, to take matters into his own hands and position himself. And if you have the mindset that you have to freelance, you can win. And that’s what Cavendish showed at the Tour de France this year. He knew he didn’t really have a leadout, so he didn’t rely on one.

No matter what, sprinting is more art than science, because it’s so dynamic. You can go back 20 years, even before Cipollini, and the leadout trains were starting and they were successful. Cipollini had the Saeco train, Petacchi had his Fassa Bortolo train. These guys were the successful sprinters, and there were a lot of runners-up behind them freelancing. Now what you’re seeing is, instead of one team doing the leadout, you’re seeing five or six teams doing it. That just makes the competition that much closer.

Bicycling: OK, you’re an aggressive rider. But you rely on some pretty sharp bike-handling skills to keep you out of trouble. Where do they come from?

Keough: One thing that’s really important as far as bike racing goes is bike-handling skills. I can’t emphasize how much they come in handy. The way to build those is not only by doing criteriums and sprints and races, but also by cross-training. I still ride BMX probably once a week when I’m home; I still ride the mountain bike constantly. I still get on the cyclocross bike with my brothers and ride and train on that. Putting all those together and being a well-rounded bike-handler is very important, not only for safety reasons but also to try to win.

Bicycling: So is it time to rest and recover in the off season?

Keough: I’m really bad at resting. I get stir-crazy. It’s actually my biggest weakness, resting properly to get the full benefits of hard training and racing. I need to go full gas all the time.

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